Stanford CIS

Andrew Rens

Andrew Rens, obtained BA and LLB degrees from the  University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,  before working as a lawyer in private practise, and then teaching human rights litigation as an attorney at the Wits Law Clinic while he completed his Master of Laws, focusing on Intellectual Property Issues on the Internet at Wits Law School . Andrew then taught  Intellectual Property, Telecommunications, Broadcasting, Space and Satellite, and Media Law and pioneered a course in Information Technology Law. From 2003 to 2005 Andrew lived in San Francisco, before returning to South Africa to help found the African Commons Project, and Freedom to Innovate South Africa, both non profit organisations, the first dedicated to the copyright commons, and the second to patent and standards reform. After working with the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, and at the LINK Centre, both at the University of the Witwatersrand, Andrew moved to Cape Town to work at the Shuttleworth Foundation as Intellectual Property Fellow. He is still  the Legal Lead for  Creative Commons South Africa.

    Recent articles

    Blog

    The Traditions of Knoweldge II

    In a previous post, the Traditions of Knowledge I referred to the appropriation of traditional knowledge by means of industrial revolution intellectual property…

    Blog

    The Traditions of Knowledge

    Conventional intellectual property laws claim to confer rights only on knowledge that is  individually authored, reduced to material form and 'original'…

    Blog

    ex africa semper aliquid novi

    I am putting up (almost) daily blogposts on my blog at www.aliquidnovi.org. Most of the posts relate to intellectual property and access to knowledge in Africa…

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    A2K @ Yale

    For the next three days I will be blogging at Icommons.org on the Access to Knowledge Conference, held at Yale Law School, hosted by the Yale Information Societ…

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    Nuturing the African Commons

    icommons Africa is a new project dedicated to Nurturing the African Commons. Africans living in a continent so rich in culture and heritage, often struggle to…

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    Censorship in Canada

    On July 9 2005 the Supreme Court of British Columbia issued an astonishing injunction against anyone who had bought or obtained a copy of a book. The injunctio…

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    nature of blogging

    To anyone even remotely familiar with blogging, websites etc its pretty obvious that a blog isn't a formal statement by the blogger on ANYTHING. Even more…

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    Telkom and Helkom logos: fair dealing?

    As I said in my previous blog entry, the Telkom/Helkom dispute has been settled. Its interesting to look at the copyright issue and compare; the Telkom image:…

    Blog

    South African government goes Open Source

    The South African government has adopted a policy to use open source software as far as possible As a result there will be increased opportunities for local de…